Mighty Morphin' #12 Main Cover (In-Hyuk Lee)
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Preface
Well, here it is.
The final prelude before war begins.
The Cover
(Sidenote: It’s getting hard for me to recognize the person in the thunderbolts. The different color shades don’t help either. It all starts blending in together eventually.)
Mighty Morphin’s cover has a good use of colors, but honestly, it’s too basic. That, and I can tell some of the art is reused makes it so it’s not that special. Power Rangers’s cover on the other hand is supposed to call back to Lord Drakkon’s first debut and uses red highlighting to convey the evil nature of the scene. And, I do like some of the detailing and shading on Drakkon. It works.
The Story
Back to Flashback Land, after Zophram’s public funeral, Zartus offers Zordon, the new Supreme Guardian, the chance to leave the Guardians and live his life farming the way he always wanted. However, Zordon declines the offer, saying he owes it to Zophram, to make his mistake of wanting Zophram to use the Zeo Crystal right and is just glad Zartus is by his side.
Back to the present, it turns out that after the Guardians of Eltar left the Command Center in the last issue, Zelya sneaked in and told the Rangers and Zordon everything Zedd told her. About the Empyreals and how Zartus is controlling them to eliminate weaker worlds that don’t belong in their alliance. She planned on going back to the Eltar ship and discovering whether Zedd was telling the truth. However, in the event she didn’t make it back, Zelya told Zordon privately one more thing: Zedd’s identity as his former mentor.
Soon after, Aisha and Tommy talk with Grace and Matt at Promethea, warning them about the whole situation. While there, Aisha convinces Billy to go and apologize to Zordon. Tommy also has a one-on-one talk with Matt, indirectly revealing that the real reason Tommy has been so hard on him. Tommy’s worried that Matt might’ve been manipulated by Grace like how Tommy was manipulated by Rita originally.
On the Moon Palace, Zordon calls and confronts Zedd about his true identity. Zordon believes that Zedd revealing this now might’ve been his way of asking for help and wanting to join forces against Zartus. However, Zedd reveals he told Zelya because he wants Zordon to realize that he is now truly alone funsies.
Unfortunately, the Eltarians pick up the transmission and realize the Rangers know of their true intentions. Sending a fake message from Zordon, the Sentry Force Four lure Rocky, Adam, and Kim into a trap. As Billy teleports to the Command Center and attempts to apologize to Zordon, Zartus arrives and Billy is forced to hide. Zartus and Zordon argue with Zartus believing that his plan of using the Empyreals is the right thing to do for their people. Zartus pleads to Zordon to join him, but Zordon refuses siding with Earth. With a sigh, Zartus then takes his weapon and destroys Zordon’s energy tube, stating that war has begun.
And… that’s the end of the series. Yep, as Zartus turned his back thinking he was cool, an energy wave from Zordon’s tube, known as the Z-Wave, spread throughout the galaxy taking care of all evil throughout the universe. Gotta say, bold move for the Z-Wave to somehow destroy Zartus twice.
Ending Thoughts
That was a lot to process.
There’s no big action sequence for this issue, which is for the best, seeing is how we’re going into an arc with presumably a lot of fight sequences. Instead, this issue focuses on the series’ main strength: the dialogue. Even if I’m not a huge fan of a certain character or a story beat, the strong and realistic voice for each character envelops me into paying full attention to every scene here. Aisha encouraging Billy to apologize to Zordon, Zordon stating that he’ll defend Earth, Tommy confronting Matt, etc. The buildup for each moment has been so long that finally seeing them does lessen the impact of each one, but the dialogue still carries the story and makes it memorable.
Mighty Morphin #12 is great, containing the final moments of peace with everyone attempting to resolve their drama before the fight of their lives begins.
Random Thoughts from the Morphin’ Grid
- Rocky: “Gold wings… for everyone?” Sorry, buddy. You don’t got Ultra Mode. That’s another 20 years.
- By the way, don’t pay attention to the timeline of this issue. After the Flashback Land sequence, we go back three days… and then we jump ahead three days. Which would make that the present. But the present was nighttime in the last issue technically.
- Grace, I’m sorry Zordon won’t apologize to you directly yet. But let me make this clear. Zordon can’t grovel. It is physically impossible for him to do that. He’s just a floating head! (He also can’t kick either.)
- It might not be intentional, but I love the panel when Tommy is looking down at a sword. To me, it’s a clever way of him thinking about himself as the brainwashed Green Ranger and using the Sword of Darkness. It fits in perfectly with the conversation.
- Matt: “Grace Sterling is no Rita Repulsa.” You’re right. Grace actually looks good in green.
- Matt (to Tommy): “…And I am definitely not you.” You’re right, again. Tommy is actually popular. Boom. Mic drop.
- But honestly, on the surface, Matt has hit the same core story elements Tommy had and the differences in their personalities aren’t that striking. Just sayin…
- Anyway, overall, I like the conversation between the two. Tommy’s behavior in earlier issues is more forgiving as we have an explanation for what he’s been feeling. What’s interesting is that it could actually be another explanation (like Kim), but Tommy is justifying it in his mind that it’s not jealousy. (Don’t forget, they weren’t friends before Matt outed himself as the Green Ranger.) Matt… I’m sorry, he’s still on my list.
- It’s about time we got a rock quarry joke!
- Even though I praise the dialogue, I gotta say, a lot of the conversations can be summed up with “Shut up, you idiot.”
